THE LISTENABLE SPEECH
Analyzing and Adapting to Your Audience
Student Analysis of Speaking Situation
For decades, writers have been concerned about the readability of their texts. Reading specialists have devised formulae that help writers and readers alike to understand what it takes to write text that is comprehensible to the reading eye. Readability has been described as the ease of comprehension as measured by the number of words per sentence.
Just as writers must be concerned for the readability of their messages, so, too, should speakers be concerned for the listenability--the ease of comprehension--of their presentations.
4.1 THE FOUNDATIONS OF LISTENABILITY
4.2 THE LISTENABLE SPEAKER
Clarity is clearness.
Colorfulness is language that helps the listener visualize the speaker's message.
4.3 LISTENER LIMITS
Listeners are limited by the time dimension.
Lack of time limits listeners. We have been conditioned to get the information quickly through media reports that are concise, specific, and limited. The average news story is presented in about 30 seconds. Therefore, it is quite difficult for many people to maintain a focus on a message for very long. Is news on the Internet shorter or longer than our exposure in other media?
Our physiological capacity for attention is limited.
Our attention capacity has been tempered by television viewing.
There are limits to our retention abilities.
The least developed learning channel for most students is the auditory, yet approximately 80 percent of secondary instruction is conveyed via the lecture format.
4.4 CREATING LISTENABLE MESSAGES
Strategically, a speaker needs to know himself/herself as a communicator.
Visual support also engages the listener.
After reading this chapter you should be able to:
Understand the concept of listenability.
Recognize the need to develop listenable messages.
Appreciate the limitations that listeners bring to speech
events.
Create listenable messages through strategy, support, structure, and style.
This chapter described the concept of public speech listenability. The major concepts discussed were:
Listenability is the ease of listening comprehension of a
presentation.
Listenable speaker style is characterized by clarity, conciseness, and colorfulness of verbal and nonverbal elements.
Listenability research has focused attention on the need for
creating listening messages.
Listeners bring limitations of time, attention, and retention, and audition to speech events.
Speakers should create listenable messages through attention to strategy, support, structure, and style.
readability
listenability
sign posts
speaking style
listenable speaker style
clarity
conciseness
sound bites
colorfulness